N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 3 : S p e c i a l E d i t i o n

L o n g P o e m M a s t e r p i e c e s o f t h e P o s t b e a t s

MIKE MAHONEY

Emergence (excerpt)

12.

go think about time....

if in the span of one inch

50 million years took place,

then earth is about ninety two inches old,

( 4.6 billion years ),

now

as far as we know, or rather

as best as we can guess –

not until about 64 to 76 inches back from today

of this 92 inch old life of earth

did earth's crust solidify,

did life begin and

the first photosynthesis happen in the oceans

- algae

(or did life arrive via panspermia theory

on an asteroid or meteor?)

at about 38 inches back from today

after enough oxygen had been

produced in the oceans

cells with fully formed nuclei

were floating about

about twenty to thirty inches after -

multicellular organisms appeared

and the first land plants took root

& sprouted w/ help from fungi

then a seemingly devastating mass extinction

250 million years ago

( only 5 inches ago )

that took every last breath of 95% of marine species

and 70% of land species

however

life bounced back with style

that major event caused a leap forward for

complex ecosystem evolution

a mere two inches later

(100 million years)

- as the supercontinent pangaea was breaking up

the first flight-gifted life forms graced the sky

giving the rock and tree poets

something completely new to flourish about

while dinosaurs were ambling around

in the limelight of their existence

now about half over

before, as the story goes, an asteroid would hit

- again destroying about 70% of life on earth,

a little over an inch ago

in the last inch of time :

the rockies, sierra nevadas, and andes as the americas moved west

horses and hoofed plant-eating mammals and elephants,

birds and whales spread,

primates thrived after the extinction of dinosaurs

grasses flowers and plants evolved spread and adapted; along with the

animals eating them

the himalayas - still growing from when india walloped asia,

a little over half an inch old

the spread of human like animals, the start of the ice age, and wooly

mammoths - all about half a millimeter ago,

in the last half millimeter of time :

the thaw and warming of weather,

the discovery of fire, neanderthals -

who made clothes, flower funerals, and tools with

stone, wood, leather, and ivory,

probably spoke to each other,

but did not have art as we know it

as neanderthals spread through the lands covered or dotted in ice,

a new branch of humans

sprouted from the cosmic lattice of possibility on the plains

of south africa,

developing and soon spreading through europe and asia

most times killing off the neanderthals, or if not killing out-surviving,

but sometimes fucking them also

homosapians had larger brains, art and decoration with cave paintings,

beads, clay statues, carvings on improved and specified tools,

probably a much more active imagination and better senses,

and a sense of the spiritual

(perhaps from their huge exposure to mushrooms growing all over the

dung-dotted plains of southafricaneden?)

glaciers melted, oceans rose,

animals grew in number and shape

and people spread, nomads tramping and warring

across the steppe of eurasia,

farmers settling in tribes learning to grow food from the ground

burning sections of forest for fertile soil

as they moved to a new area

first large villages and cities grew around extremely fertile river valleys

in china, egypt, iraq, and india,

where specialization of novelty started,

priest-kings rose in power over other humans,

people made leaps of connections discoveries and inventions from

studying the stars,

language systems math systems and calendars,

reading and writing, astrology, philosophy, wars with nomads,

the weather pendulum reached its warmest point,

swung back towards ice age

the nomads battled for sustainable areas on the icy steppes

with losers leaving and easily taking over the surrounding farming villages

and cities with better weapons and riding horses,

those new kings made laws, which were written down, and battled each other

for more land

in india

the people set up strict caste systems of society, hinduism, and

mathematics,

the number zero, and buddhism which spread into

china, who meanwhile like india,

separated by the mountains and deserts,

and had their own developments, their own magic & alchemy,

built a wall to keep nomads out,

and generally resisted new ideas and change,

had their own terrors,

their own good and bad kingdoms to worry about

two other lost civilizations, flowering and gone so quickly,

sprang up in mexico and the other in the andes,

they developed similarly with other civilizations but were destroyed by

europeans immediately upon arriving

the middle east was at the center of virtually everything

for a small time,

and from a series of egomaniacs self-proclaiming their righteousness

and godliness and chosenness leading people all over

and by claiming whatever

lands they chanced upon they started brutal wars and bitter

arguments not just about the lands and bloodshed,

but about who's imaginary god was more powerful!

eventually this way of life grew popular,

and empires were started

they were expensive to maintain because not only did you

have to take over by bloody war the neighboring lands

and civilizations,

but you had to maintain and defend them and enforce your law on them

victories came with new technologies, Bronze to Iron,

poetry and mythologies from the greeks in homer & hesiod

and later philosophies too from plato, from socrates

from hermes trismegistus

tao and poetry and philosophies from the east - from lao tzu, from chuang-tzu,

the roman empire,

christianity from a radical counterculture hippie & new thinker named jesus,

empires fell, muhammad, an arabic nomad, started islam,

which would go on to establish itself alongside christianity,

the two murdering thousands and thousands more humans than they

ever could have saved combined

new inventions flourished everywhere through civilizations, sciences,

information, ideas,

all being spread and merged and mixed with help from

the printing press

tossed about in the waves of consensual reality,

of shared subconscious and the co-created future

mining, metal-working, ship building, architecturing,

wind mills, horse ploughs, glass working, universities, old ideas,

new urge for knowledge,

the procreant nature of spreading ideas, a new zeal,

a raising of intelligence, of pride, of entitlement and control,

of greed and intellectual power, of journeys and discoveries by boat,

of desire to spread religion, of gunpowder, of the earth going around the sun,

of another planetary cooling begun,

the raising of machu picchu(?), of literature science and art, of republic,

of nationalism, of michelangelo & da vinci, copernicus

& montaigne & shakespeare

newspapers, trains, mercenaries, sanctuaries, secretaries, seminaries,

contemporaries, dictionaries and glossaries, libraries, capillaries, witchcraftery,

tales of canterbury, lingerie and harlotry, surgery and psychiatry, auxiliaries,

adulteries, anniversaries, declaratory and adversary and discriminatory and accusatory

commentaries, laws of physics, archetypal concepts of morals and afterlife theories

deeply rooted in subconscious, classical music, shamans, opera singers, swimmers,

gypsies, fisherman, novelists, copyists, pickpocketers, magicians, musicians, drummers,

trance leaders, dreamers, iron workers, miners, explorers, mapmakers, topographers,

jungle guides, storytellers, tourists, bakers, butchers, robbers, conmen, tax collectors,

poets, students, new energy, new ways of thinking, new ways of sensing, of making

things, of achieving things, of what's possible, photography, time speeding up and down,

chemical understanding, chemical engineering, antiseptics prescription drugs,

sterilizations, immunizations, better food, longer health, better medicine, faster transport,

shrinking distance, shrinking time, time speeding up, teachers, outsiders, detectives,

lawyers, mysteries, travelers, translators, racemen, athletes, cooks, politicians, law

enforcement, law makers, priests, masters, geniuses, prodigies, house builders, sculptors,

painters, drunkards, addicts, clingers, lovers, obsessors, possessors, talk-too-muchers,

comforters, tricksters, order preparers, deliverers, relations, mothers and fathers and

uncles and brothers and sisters and cousins and grand parents or godparents or step sisters

of half cousins or blood brothers or aunts,

all me all you

all i all we all us

all one intricate and grand flowering of design

and street performers, and perfumes, and colonies, and new land,

redman land, hatchets again,

but europe, business on the mind,

settlement, segregation, revolution, devastation, war,

then more war

almost to extinction, trail of tears, wounded knee, incredible

disrespect, deep deep sorrow and hurt,

unforgivable acts, skeletons in america's closet, and under its rugs,

in its psyche a dark dark past,

navajo long walk, wounded knee, ghost dance, slavery, tobacco plantations, cotton fields,

indians near gone from land, africans being bought & sold,

buffalo disappearing into their shadows,

relationship with america becoming lost, so much knowledge gone,

but new thinkers, composers, transcendentalism, hope yet,

isaac newton, thomas jefferson, mozart, ben franklin, melville, emerson, thoreau,

whitman & wilde, blake, bach, & beethoven, darwin,

more conflict. civil war, half a million men dead or injured, think of their families,

friends, think if there was any one person in america not personally affected, lincoln,

right and left, north and south, racism still so strong, prohibition, gangsters, market crash,

f.b.i., depression, war, reporters, newsies, shoemakers, cowboys, lovers, loggers, wood

cutters, choke setters, church-going slave owners, farmers, cow-milkers, sign makers, tap

dancers, blues singers, bootleggers, mathematicians, inventors, counter culture heroes,

myths, over-harvested land, over cutting down of forests, childlike disputes over

ownership, bloody war heroes and veterans, amputees, horror-haunted nightmares,

bloodstained battlefields, all for cause of course, preachers, teachers, disciplinarians,

authoritarians, totalitarians, evolution in microcosms, microeras, microcycles, getting

smaller, quicker, faster, roaring,

then: an american journalist wrote in 1927 :"a change has come over our

democracy, it is called consumptionism. the american citizen's first

importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen,

but that of consumer."

o walt, what would you think

of the america that exists today:

unions, growth, factories, factories, factories, industry, pearl harbor, electricity, trade, trains, trolleys, endless war, subways, cars, buses, planes, motorcycles, steamboats, motor boats, blues, big band, another war, dadaists, impressionists, embellishers, cubists, just plain realists, surrealists, be bop, telephones, post bop, more wars, cities, rock'n'roll, shopping malls, colder wars, surrealism, the double discovery of lsd and dna, eastern philosophy makes its way west, barber shops, sport hunting, cowboys, frontier, democracy, megalomaniacy, secret pacts, closed door deals, under the table bribes, crowd control, policemen, world music, drive-in movie theaters, gambling, ovens, dishwashers, refrigerators, professional sports, fast food, communism, bowling, t.v.'s, encyclopedias, movies theaters, public school systems, economic crashes, national disasters, national and state parks, prohibitions, ever-expanding mass production, mass manipulation of perception, mass production of propaganda, control of the masses, megamass production of consumer culture, hippies, mass consumer persuasion, product placement in movies for mass consumer producers, all edward bernays, illegal plants, age limits, freedoms, thousands more laws, betting, state prisons, fractions of forests left, hundreds of animals extinct, cell phones, video games, satellites orbiting our planet, astronomical level of national debt, humans in space, thousands more discoveries every day, assassinations, thousands of books and poems and songs written each day, cd players, boomboxes, stereos, car stereos, music festivals, ipods, ipads, hybrid cars, computers, personal computers, kerouac hits the road, ginsberg howls, snyder hits the meditation mat, leary hits priesthood, campbell hits myth-hood, lsd illegal, more wars, government and police peddle narcotics and opiates, d.u.i. check points, shopping addicts, laptops, america online, world wide web, internet, wireless internet, immediate access to all information, a new type of reality one can exist in, create in, entire indian tribes still gone, american children still taught columbus is a hero who discovered america and loved the native savages here before him, bukowski starts writing poems, kitchen appliances, lights, grandfather clocks, crime scenes, electric wheelchairs, solar panels, flat screen plasma t.v.'s, movies in 3-d, medical marijuana, tivo, facebook, fox news, millions of pieces of information traveling to satellites orbiting the globe and shooting to back to everything everywhere, downloading music, scenes within scenes of social genres, bob dylan, circles, cliques, fads, police brutality, protests, post-modernism, ignorance, led zeppelin, movements, styles, cliché, uncool, all changing constantly within each turn of the earth towards and away from the sun every twelve hours, gps devices that pinpoint your location, give you directions, and tell you what's around subdivided by category within a 1/10 of a mile, smartphones that save track and record every picture text message google search and coordinates of your location at all times, videogames that look more real than the sport of adventure they simulate, people smoking three and four packs a day of cigarettes, aluminum in our deodorant that increases our risk for alzheimer's, water boarding, high fructose corn syrup in nearly all food which is linked with obesity, heart problems, and cancer, and deactivates the production of insulin - which "acts as a hunger quenching signal to the brain..." zoos hipsters and aquariums, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the ocean a day, people wasting time blaming each other while the planet drowns in thick coats of its own black earth blood, thick oily planet vomit chocking itself while we watch helpless, cars that can drive over 200mph, planes that can get you the other side of the world in a ten hours, lsd that can you show other worlds for ten hours, coltrane and elvin - who we could listen to duet for ten hours, information age in full steam, the golden years ahead, millions of people online at all times, people meditating, everywhere, the vibrational state of consciousness raising, people feeling time speed up, people feeling some kind of energy building, tension building, something building, more people stopping to watch the moon even when it's not full, more people factorying, more people reading poetry, more people writing poetry, more people listening to jazz, more people depressed, more people thinking they're going crazy, more people wondering, more people questioning, more people reading, more people finding out, more people politicking, bob marley catches a fire, more people wanting to learn, more people howling, more people wanting to be healthy in all ways, more people wanting to be turned on, more people in general, population exploding through the chart in the last hundred years, people living significantly longer, people growing more distant between poor to rich, people leaving christianity to rest in peace, people looking for answers, people not knowing what questions to ask, people feeling distrustful, people suspicious, people anxious, people curious, people waking, people starting to smile more, people filling their gas tanks to the brim, pogs, cheezits, 39 ingredients in mcdonalds chicken nuggets, people filling their shopping bags to the brim, drill! drill! drill! buy! buy! buy! but hurry! hurry! hurry! brittney spears christina aguilera nsync justin bieber backstreet boys etc etc etc etc…profit over art, profit over dignity, profit over product, profit over talent, profit over process, profit over music, profit over beauty, profit over healing, government makes swine/bird flu in labs and releases it to public, more people getting shots, taking pills, numbing down, getting high, getting drunk, trying to quit cigarettes, politicians who think the world is 5000 years old, homeless people, sleeping in cardboard boxes, prostitutes sucking a suits dick ten feet down the street at 1am, thousands of homeless or crazy broken humans living in the subway, school security guards by day asking for change on the street later that night, traveling circuses, monster trucks, wrestling, drinking games, tv shows about the internet, 4loko, athletes getting away with murder, mustaches, ipads and poor clothes, fixed gear bikes, pseudo irony, christians still waiting, christianity yet to roll away the rock from its heart and practice what it preaches, earthquakes devastating thousands of peoples lives, tornados, wild forest fires, freak storms, fraud gurus, confusion of what's real, crop circles, everywhere people bursting with new ideas, simultaneously and furiously gripping the old ones, people getting robbed, people with 200 dollar a day coke habits, people fighting other people on board ships over whales, people making fake reality tv shows, people watching fake reality tv shows, people afraid of death still, after all this time, people getting so drunk, not realizing there's infinite number of ways to look at any one thing, infinite number of possibilities all the time, iraq, twin towers, friends over sea, faraway, taking mortar fire, people crazy on all sides, scientology, celebrities, thousands of kids out of college, no jobs, afghanistan, cults, ipads, iphones, ipods, eharmonys, emails, dmt, house of tea, blackberry, rage against the dying night, rage against the machine, neil degrasse tyson, dream songs, aboriginals, fellowships, grants, awards, potential, stocks, dividends and bonds, happy hour, soldiers of war charged w/ vicious accounts of torture and disrespect and murder, unbelievable justification for war in daily language and news, everything turned into a novelty, everything turned into a commodity, everything turned into a threat a fear a victim or a terrorist, everyone numbers in the eyes of the few on top, everyone with the matrix of news and media pulled over there eyes, everything turned into a marketable product, even people, even concepts, even protests, even games, march madness, cars that park themselves, you tube, wikileaks, new york times, billboard top 40, times square, airport x-rays, corrupt cops, corrupt priests, church scandals, snowboarding, skydiving, secret service, cia, fbi, the first (half)black president, bowling alleys, pillheads, philadelphia 300 murders two years in a row, usa 1/3 of children obese, philadelphia rated last in healthiest 100 american cities, taxi’s, under river tunnels, sports center, mtv, hbo, john stewart steve colbert bill maher, bill orielly politics turned into a reality show, designer drugs taken recreationally by stupid kids, 1,000 years worth of history packed into a few decades, kids huffing paint cans, whipits, fashion trends, rap wars, conmen, robbers, vegans, many people doing yoga not many yogis, monday morning quarterbacks, the new greek myths of america updated as star wars, the matrix, the lord of the rings, harry potter, divorce depression and creativity rate skyrocketing, facebook facebook facebook, south park, cartoons, wall street, filthy dirty politics, information unbelievably easy to access, information flying everywhere, outback steakhouse, chilli’s, burger king, applebees, superpacs which guarantee unlimited money influencing politics and elections, materialism everywhere you look, diamonds equal love, money equals power equals status, text messages, science making incredible discoveries and advances while lies literally fill the airwaves in every advertisement in a lot of the news in the formulated music on radiowaves, everything is an advertisement, everything is speeding up, profit over peace, profit over sustainability, profit over enlightenment, profit over justice, profit over truth, profit over reality, profit over family, profit over dignity, profit over love, the population exploding everywhere! & tv! tv! tv! flat screen tv’s! plasma tv’s! tv’s in cars! tv’s in planes! tv’s at gas stations! tv’s in your kitchen! in your bathroom! in the bars! in the gyms! in stadiums! outside of buildings! people looking at tv screens everywhere! cell phone screens everywhere! ipod screens ipad screens laptop screens computer screens everywhere! the living breathing reality being traded in for the digital handheld kind everywhere! at what price?

( Breathe out… )

[“Emergence” is a book-length poem self-publish by the author in 2011. Used by permission.]

Poet/musician Mike Mahoney studied music & drums at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. (bachelor's in jazz performance). Author of Emergence, a major first book of poems described by Milwaukee poet Antler “...as if ‘Howl’ and ‘Factory’ got married and had a child and it was you. Or the miraculous return of Whitman, Snyder, Muir, Abbey, Rumi, Gibran in a tender-hearted 24-year-old marijuana mushroom sacrament wilderness visionquester drummer shaman freedom singer.” He is the composer/drummer/band leader on modern-jazz album Wallingford.